Schadenfrude On Steroids

Americans For Progress conferees erupt in cheers at news that the USA lost the Olympics

Last January, Rush Limpbot declared he wanted President Obama to fail. He rightly got a lot of heat for it, including from traditional conservatives desperately clinging to the illusion that their brand hasn’t been hijacked by wingnut/dittoheads who put political victory (and the power it brings) over the welfare of the nation as a whole.

Limpbot subsequently walked the comment back, claiming he meant Obama personally and not his presidency. Nice try, but the rest of the world got a good look at the ugly cesspool of self-interest and hatred that animates the winger universe, visible in their relentless attacks on Obama personally and on the agenda that he was elected to enact.

Their vitriol was on full display last week when the The International Olympic Committee (IOC) awarded the 2016 Olympics to Brazil,  despite a last minute appearance by Obama in Copenhagen to argue for holding the games in the USA. Exulted Limpbot: “The ego has landed!”, who along with other members of The Mighty Wurlitzer such as The Weekly Standard, spun it as a devastating personal defeat for Obama. George Will, in his WAPO column yesterday, clutched his pearls and snorted disapprovingly:

Both Obamas gave heartfelt speeches about . . . themselves.  Although the working of the committee’s mind is murky, it could reasonably have rejected Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Games on aesthetic grounds — unless narcissism has suddenly become an Olympic sport.

No one was happier than Karl “Whiny Bitch” Rove, who saw it as comeuppance for Obama’s international “apology tour”, i.e., Obama’s acknowledgment of the obvious mess that he and Bush made of America’s image in the world.  In fact, one of the concerns by the IOC was that the onerous visa policies that the Bush Administration had put in place might still be in effect, making travel to the US problematic for the tens of  thousands of international spectators expected to attend.

Rove  complaining that Obama isn’t  prosecuting Bush’s international alienation agenda

(Bad news for Obama haters. A new GFK Roper poll shows that where the US was considered the 7th most admired country in the world under Bush and Rove, it is now ranked numero uno under a mixed raced bootstrapper who actually embodies the American dream. A dream hijacked by the ruling class to hoodwink Joe the Plumber types into supporting their agenda of tax cuts, small government, and most importantly of all, freedom from prosecution.)

Looking at some of the criticisms that preceded Obama‘s last minute trip shows to what extent the wingers’ id fueled rage towards him personally has compromised their ability to think rationally, to see the obvious contradictions in their positions. For instance, new unemployment figures were released Friday showing a still dismal job picture.  Obama should have stayed home to concentrate on putting Americans back to work, twittered Newt Gingrich, totally ignoring the fact that had the US won the bid it would have meant tens of thousands of new jobs and billions of dollars pumped into the local Chicago and regional economy.  A victory that would have been produced by a whole four hours of the President’s time on the ground in Copenhagen, sandwiched in between office sessions aboard Air Force One.

Gingrich also argued that Obama shouldn’t have gone, until and unless, the White House was confident of victory lest the president be embarrassed and surrender a chunk of his presumed aura of omnipotence.  As if real leadership means only stepping out in front when it’s safe, when all risk is eliminated. (I was going to say something like: “Who’d you rather share a foxhole with, Barack Obama or Newt Gingrich?” but my imagination short-circuited trying to imagine the latter. Ewwe!)

And does anyone doubt that had Obama not gone that he would have been reamed for being indifferent to the needs of his Chicago homies? With enough repetition by the winger media (reinforced by the establishment media just “reporting” on the manufactured controversy), indifference would become a new winger meme/symbol that could be attached to other issues and narratives, like the upcoming decision over Afghanistan: Failure to give General McChrystal a blank check and 40,000 more troops would be spun as just another example of Obama’s indifference to the needs of his embattled troops.

While there are far more important issues confronting the world than who gets to host the Olympics, the gleeful reaction by the wingers at Rio’s victory over Chicago underscores the extent that their hatred for Obama trumps any concern they might have for what’s good for the country. The fact that many Americans are living on the edge, one paycheck or a catastrophic family illness away from economic and personal ruin, makes them easy prey for propagandists like Limpbot and Gingrich.

Paul Krugman has more on The Politics of Spite. This excerpt reminded me of an earlier post of mine titled Whatever It Is They’re Against It.

… the episode illustrated an essential truth about the state of American politics: at this point, the guiding principle of one of our nation’s two great political parties is spite pure and simple. If Republicans think something might be good for the president, they’re against it — whether or not it’s good for America.

Groucho Marx singing the Rethug theme song

 

8 Comments

  1. Propagandee

    nonnie,

    That’s another way of asking: Is it too late? Has the wingers’ descent into the limbic reached the point of no return, such that they would act against their own interests out of crazed spite?

    Methinks they have.

  2. Propagandee

    nonnie:

    My guess is that if Obama hadn’t gone and they lost, they would have blamed him for not going; if he had gone and they’d lost anyway, they’d blamed him for screwing it up.

    Life is so simple that way.

  3. Yes, in the Douchebaggery of wingnut leadership, you only step out, in a Pope Mobile wearing body armor, with all the peasants face down in the dirt. And when things go wrong, you scuttle like roaches and find a human sacrifice to appease the masses while the wingnuts continue scheming behind the scenes to find new and interesting ways to rob the poor and the dead. I am neither shocked nor surprised by any of the antics of the Dittobot Ghoul Party. They are just waiting for Armageddon anyhow Which is code for suicidal ideations.

  4. Propagandee

    Agree. In my first drafts, I coupled disloyalty with indifference, as in Obama being idifferent and disloyal to his Chicago homies. Don’t remember exactly why I omitted the loyalty angle, thinking perhaps it was implied…

    But you’re definitely correct that the disloyal/traitor meme, already present among the wingers, is about to get its own steroid injection vis a vis General McChrystal’s request for tens of thousands of more troops for Afutilestan if Obama doesn’t agree.

    Reminds me of the “stab in the back” meme prevalent in Germany after its loss of WW1. A meme that Hitler exploited to the max to get the old guard military to back his putsch.

    I listen to Glenn Blech’s radio program on occasion and IMO he’s stirring up a real ‘take back the government’ from Obama movement, by whatever means necessary (mirrored in the Newsmax article calling for same that was taken down from their web site last week).

    A real military coup was deep in the planning stages against FDR in which Prescott Bush played an organizing role. His little cabal of industrialists tried to recruit two time medal of honor award winner Marine General Smedley Butler to lead an army of 500,000 vets into D.C. , but Butler (who wrote “War Is A Racket”) blew the whistle, and later testified to Congress about it.

    History seems to be repeating itself.

  5. Awesome post, Prop:
    “Bad news for Obama haters. A new GFK Roper poll shows that where the US was considered the 7th most admired country in the world under Bush and Rove, it is now ranked numero uno under a mixed raced bootstrapper who actually embodies the American dream. A dream hijacked by the ruling class to hoodwink Joe the Plumber types into supporting their agenda of tax cuts, small government, and most importantly of all, freedom from prosecution.”

    I would take issue with one conclusion, tho— if O does’nt give the chickenshits their war escalation fix, they won’t spin it as indifference— they’ll spin it as a Commie destroyin’ Amerka from within. Far more rabid, imo.

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